In the Southern States of America, where farming or large plantations formed the main industry, black slavery became widespread and profitable. Slave traders from Europe and America caught people in Africa, took them to America and sold them to the southern colonists. The slaves were used in the plantations to raise tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, and to do all the hard work. The cotton plantations needed more and more slaves as labourers because the demand for cotton increased, so in a few years more than 1,000,000 black people were carried to America by slave traders.

Life was intolerable for those slaves because slavery often broke up black people families, separated children from their parents and husbands from their wives. They lived in cabins, the food was scarce, and they received harsh punishment for minor offenses. Many laws were directed against free black people as well as slaves because the colonists feared that free black people might lead revolts.

In 1860 about 4,500,000 black people were in the United States and only less than 500,000 were freemen. Some had bought their own freedom, but free black people often found it difficult to make a living. Most states restricted the kinds of jobs in which a black person could be employed; white workers in the North often objected to working side by side with black people, who were also required to carry passes and could not move about as they wished. There were some movements for the abolition of slavery as well as interesting writings such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom's Cabin”, which focused national attention on the slavery issue, but many years had to pass before slavery was to be abolished.